Sunday, 14 April 2013

Game 31: Mean Streets - Introduction

I can't believe this will be my first Tex Murphy game!

Let’s start from the beginning shall we? In 1982, Bruce Carver formed a video game development company called Access Software with his brother Roger and friend Chris Jones. They immediately set about creating titles for 8-bit computers, including Neutral Zone, Beach-Head I & II, Raid Over Moscow and the golf title Leader Board. The first DOS game out of Access was a tenpin bowling game called 10th Frame, which was quickly followed by another golf game called World Class Leader Board. By this stage, the majority of Access games had been fairly simplistic affairs, designed and programmed almost entirely by Roger and Bruce, but 1987’s space combat simulator Echelon attempted something more complicated.

Bruce Carver: The main man behind Access Software

Designed by Bruce, Roger and Brent Erickson, with a story by David Brown and Chris Jones, Echelon combined wire-framed graphics based space combat simulation with a puzzle based mystery to solve. It also showed off Access' groundbreaking PC audio technology called RealSound, a technique that used the PC speaker to “generate high-quality digitized sounds such as speech, music and sound effects without the use of additional hardware.” Unfortunately, Echelon sucked, but it inspired the team to have another shot at a similar game in the future. The team therefore set out to develop another flight game, only this time they would incorporate a film noir detective story that had been formulated while filming a homemade movie in their spare time.

Echelon: Space combat simulation with puzzles to boot

During the development of the game, more and more adventure game elements were added to the mix, and the eventual result was an odd hybrid called Mean Streets. Set in San Francisco in the year 2033, Mean Streets follows a private investigator named Tex Murphy as he tries to solve a case, being the death of Dr. Carl Linsky, the father of a beautiful woman named Sylvia. The game was directed by Bruce Carver and the story was written by Chris Jones (who would go on to star as Tex Murphy himself in future games) and Brian Ferguson (who has no other credits as far as I can tell). I’ve read an interview with Chris Jones where he stated that his biggest influences for the Tex Murphy series were Sam Spade novels, the movie Casablanca, Blade Runner and The Twilight Zone TV series, which explains the mix of film noir and sci-fi.

There are worse places to take inspiration from.

Programming and design were handled by Roger Carver, Access regulars Kevin Homer and Brent Erickson (who would go on to design and write adventure game Noctropolis), and first timer David Curtin. Doug Vandegrift, John Berven, Zeke McCabe and Jon Clark combined the give the game its distinct visuals while Steve Witzel handled the sound. Mean Streets was the first popular PC game to fully support 256 colour VGA graphics, and it was also the first to support EGA, CGA and Hercules graphics modes with real-time quantization and dithering. I don’t know much about this sort of technology, but I believe this means they converted the graphics on the fly for each different mode rather than pre-converting all possible outcomes (which would have taken up twice the disk space). This was considered a big achievement at the time and along with the RealSound technology, shows that Access were really trying to push the technology boundaries.

Chris Jones: Wrote the story. Oh...and he's also Tex Murphy!

That’s enough background information though; it’s time for me to play my first Tex Murphy game. That’s right! I’ve never played any of the games in the series, and I don’t really have any decent explanation as to why. I guess the early ones came out when I was playing whatever games were given to me by my friends for my Amiga (yes, pretty much all pirated, which I’m not proud of) and by the time the later games came out, I was switching between LucasArts adventures and every first person shooter game I could find. Anyway, I’ve got my GOG purchased Tex Murphy collection, so will be playing the game in DOSBox I guess. I’ve played the last few games in SCUMMVM because it makes it so much easier to take quality screenshots on the fly, but my brief attempts to start Mean Streets in SCUMMVM failed. I haven’t even Googled it yet, but if anyone knows if that’s possible, please let me know (Laukku recently informed me that it is possible to take decent shortcut screenshots with DOSBox, so I'll look into that too). The GOG collection comes with a Detective Information Chart, a map, and a manual, so I should be all set!

Oh my!!! Could theyhave been any more blatant in their Blade Runner plagiarism?!

Note
Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: I've recently written a
set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any
comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that
no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring
one. As this is an introduction post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10
CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle
unassisted (see below for an example). If you get it right I will reward you
with 100 CAPs in return (it's going to keep going up until someone beats me)!
It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game.
Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else
has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.

Extra
Note: Once again, Lars-Erik will gift the next readily available game
on the list to the reader that correctly predicts what score I will give this
game. So, if you predict the right score (or are closest), you will get 10 CAPs
and a copy of Space Quest 1, 2 & 3 from GOG! How awesome is that!? Good luck!

49 comments:

Wheeee, Tex Murphy! I'm giddy as a school girl that we're finally here, this series has a really special place in my heart.

Unfortunately Mean Streets isn't as good as the later ones due to its origins as a flight game. I'd guess somewhere in the 40s on the PISSED scale; even though it has a lot of technical firsts, it has weaknesses as an adventure game. I'll say 46. I will however join you in playing it, can't say no to that.

A book she gave before the dayShe disappeared in the strangest wayA demon wants to steal her powerThis studio I must surely scourThere are no spiders despite the nameYet plenty of monsters just the sameLucky I have some spells to castTo help me find my witch at last

Speaking of which... I think it's unlikely people will help with the CAPs for needed for you to play it, but for the sake of completeness you are missing Elvira: Mistress of the Dark from the list of 1990 games.

"Interactive Movie" is not a genre, and I'm assuming you are mistaking it for FMV games which are completely different. Wing Commander was advertised as being an interactive movie also, and thats from the Space Simulator genre.

Actually there is (according to Wikipedia), but I wouldn't classify Mean Streets as one of them, regardless of what the box says. :p

Comparing the adventure game list to the list of interactive movies on wikipedia, it seems the first we'll encounter is Lost in Time, a 1993 borderline game.

What I think we'll need to consider is the genre definition. You have the "Choose Your Own Adventure" type of games, where different selections just pop you further in the movie and the only thing you do is make pathing choices. These are what I consider the true interactive movies, only influencing what chapters play depending on your selection.

But then we have the true adventure games which just use FMV as cutscenes and story progression instead of animation. These can work really really well as adventure games (or other games for that matter, such as Wing Commander which uses FMV as cutscenes between the actual game play. Another example is the Command and Conquer series of RTS games, which relies heavily on FMV cutscenes.). None of these are considered interactive movies today because the main gameplay is the focus.

Unfortunately the two different types are often mistaken for eachother, spilling the bad reputation for one over to the other. It might be because the adventure game genre really lends itself to this kind of approach? It allows developers to straddle the genres wherever they like, putting the game where they want on the scale from adventure game to interactive movie. In any case I don't think we're really threre yet where the lines truly blur together, but we'll get there soon enough.

And Sarah, I'm not saying your score is wrong at all. In fact, my first thought was closer to your guess than what I put up as well. :)

'Interactive movies' in their purest form do exist. Braindead 13, or Dragon's Lair, for instance, are very muchly so. The 'gameplay' is sheer trial and error, involving a single button push per room - there's no more game to it. Wing Commander is a flight sim with interactive movie elements, perhaps.. but I'd say that given we can point to something and clearly call it such, it's easier to just say that Wing Commander is a flight/space sim which tells its story largely through non-gameplay ruled movies (although there are gameplay elements that can be influenced through it.)

I've never played a Tex Murphy game either, so I'll be interested to see what they're all about. Are they all pretty similar in gameplay, or are there significant changes over the course of the series?

I'm going to have to guess at a final score, but people seem to be going quite low.

I've never really played Tex Murphy -series either: I tried Mean Streets couple of years ago, but found it a bit tedious. I started to play it today and it still feels a bit tedious: most of the time I was just waiting to get to a new place. Hopefully, it will get better (and it's nice to know faxes are still used in the future).

Technically the game seems innovative: it uses VGA (and especially the images of people look realistic) and the sound effects are pretty good for the era (the music is just one simple tune, as far as I've heard). The controls, on the other hand, feel a bit primitive (mouse is sorely missed).

Wow, it seems like almost no one here has played Mean Steets. Add me to that list. I'll definitely be playing along though, since I got Mean Streets on GOG for guessing Indiana Jones' score. Plus I've always been interested in the Tex Murphy series and I'm interested in seeing where it originated, even if this one isn't as good as the later ones. I'm gunna take a stab in the dark for the PISSED score and guess 52.

I've actually played and finished the game for the first time less than two years ago when I found it on GOG. I guess Trickster will enjoy the game as long as he likes typing clues and connecting the dots -which I do, but I found some other things to be pretty unforgivable. I'm also going to bet (with no AP) that

Awesome! I'm a huge Tex Murphy fan, so this should be a treat. I never could get very far in Mean Streets, mainly due to lack of patience at the driving sections, but this should be a very entertaining playthrough.

Actually, on reflection I think our predictions may all be a bit too low.

With the way the PISSED rating works, the main problems people seem to have with the game are the fight and flight sequences, and they'd both appear in the "Interface and Inventory" section even thought they take up a lot of the game time.

The other parts of the game seem to be done quite well so the PSSED sections should score fairly highly and counteract a low I score.

I'm not personally going to change my score for purely superstitious reasons, but I highly recommend other less superstitious people take numbers higher than 56 though.

OK then, I'll take you up on that as I'm not superstitious, and as I have no idea about the game nor have bothered finding out anything other than what has been posted here, I'll add a nice round 10 to my wild stab in the dark (I couldn't possibly call it a prediction) and go with 58.

I haven't played this game since it first came out. I remember the RealSound stuff being really cool but very tinny and as if it was going to blow up my speaker. Of course this was before I had the Adlib so I took it and liked it. I remember flying around and having difficulty landing/finding the locations even when I knew where I was supposed to go. I'll give it a 49 for the story and graphics/audio.

Played this back in the day! I have no idea how Access was able to get the PC speaker, with its bleeps and bloops, to simulate speech, but they did! Granted, it's nothing compared to sound card quality, but I was amazed at the time.

I remember it being an adventure/flight simulator/action game. I hated the action sequences (make sure to get your DOSBox set to a manageable speed), but I found the rest a lot of fun.

I loved this game when I played it as a 13 year old. Which means it probably wasn't too good. Part of the reason (I liked it) was for the TrueVoice touches which, after upgrading to a Tandy after my 8088 sounded like Mozart. "Gurl'er va zl urnq, gurl'er va zl urnq!" sebz gur ibvprznvy (be nhqvb ybt V pna'g erzrzore) jnf na njrfbzr gbhpu sbe gur gvzr.

Out of nostalgia, I'm going to bet 59. I don't think it will score that high, but I didn't want to bet someone else's bet as a noob. Methinks that might be bad form. I don't want to be equivalent to the 1 dollar guy from price is right.

I really wish people looking to play this series for the first time wouldn't start with this one. It doesn't make the right first impression. It's an interesting game to play if you're a fan of the series, but it's not that GOOD per se, and it's certainly not a good starting point.

Under a Killing Moon was basically a reboot for the series. That's where the series we all love actually starts. The odd precursors are pretty misleading.

Cerfvqrag Zvpunry W. Sbk?????? And here I thought Arnold as a governor couldn't be topped...

A general question to anyone who has played this game. The puzzles so far have been quite easy, of the "find a correct key for a keyhole" -variety. On the other hand, I keep finding these valuable items with no obvious purpose, say, something like a golden Australian cricket championship trophy (I just made that up). Can I assume that these will never be used in some obscure puzzle and sell them (bribing is costly)? Answer in ROT13, if needs be.

Yes, I noticed that too, I am just afraid I'll be penniless at the time, when I should buy some 5000 credit item back for a puzzle.

Heh, I've stumbled into couple of such alarms also (I guess they are a necessity when every other neighbourhood has people with machine guns shooting around). It's even more fun when the time starts ticking the moment you enter the room... the police will be here any minute, where's the off switch?

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